Sustainable Exhibition Stand
Posted 11 December 2012 as Clarity News,Eco-innovation,Environmental Management,Events by Leigh
We’ve spent the last few months working with Cranfield University Centre for Design, the Sustainable Design experts, working out how to build the exhibition stand of the future – a more sustainable ‘greener’ exhibition stand.
Exhibitions generate a huge quantity of waste – the stands themselves are often a key element of this. The larger exhibition stands may feature stock walls but are often largely un-reusable and often destined for landfill.
We conducted some primary research to explore people’s perceptions to this challenge. Our finding were that the venues, exhibitors and exhibition delegates, even at sustainability focused exhibitions are little awareness of the challenge, and everybody thinking another party had taken such considerations.
We don’t want to limit creativity or the impact our clients can make at exhibitions by moving from dynamic bespoke built stands to an (often quite dull) system. Far from it – as well as achieving great returns for clients, exciting stands are were we get put forward for awards.
So what’s the answer to minimising environmental impact whilst maximising exhibition impact? There might not be a silver bullet but our work with Cranfield did help us build and bolster capabilities in the area required to make the more sustainable exhibition stand a reality:
Careful selection of materials
Choosing the materials that have lower embodied carbon, lower toxicity and recyclability whilst maintaining the characteristics of the traditional materials which make them so successful to work with.
Supply chain, travel & waste management
Having the processes and supply chain management to ensure we reduce travel and waste where possible.
Reusable elements
Having said that ‘stand systems’ are not always the way to go for some organisations, reusability is a concept that even the most bespoke built exhibition stand can embrace. Alongside Cranfield, we have developed a way to deliver re-usable plinths and walling that do not meet standard stock wall sizes but does not limit the creativity of the stand.
Hiring equipment
Much equipment can be hired to save you money as well as reducing environmental impact. From furniture to AV equipment, we treat this the same as sourcing any material – looking at the environmental credentials of the item, including energy saving opportunies.
Carbon calculation & offsetting
When you’ve reduced the environmental impact of the exhibition stand as much as is feasible, there is still going to be a remaining impact. We offer clients the option of calculating the remaining carbon emissions of the stand and offsetting these.
Find out more about our more sustainable exhibition stands and see some examples by following this link.
We will be publishing a full report of our findings and recipe for the greener exhibition stand in due course. Can’t wait that long? Then get in touch and we’ll happily talk you through the summary and how you can embrace a stand that not only has carefully considered sustainability credentials, but is proven to deliver commercial results, just call 01525 292 005.
